The Two of Swords, Volume 2

by K. J. Parker

  “Grandad,” the younger boy called out. Musen guessed the range and threw his stone. It hit the older boy on the ear; he rocked, and dropped. The old man stood up on the box; the other boy was scrabbling in his cloth bag. It was a simple case of time and distance. Musen jumped to his feet and ran towards the cart. The old man must’ve seen the little axe; he stooped for it, but he didn’t have time. Musen grabbed his ankle and pulled his feet out from under him, and he went down, cracking his head against a barrel. The boy was still fumbling in his bag; Musen vaulted on to the box and kicked his head like a ball, then bent down, snatched the axe and sank it into the old man’s skull, like you do with a stump in the woods, so you can find your axe again.

  He looked round. The older boy was trying to get up. Musen leapt down, dragging the axe free as he landed. The boy saw him coming and raised his arm. Musen swept low and chopped into his shin; then, as he dropped, he pulled a draw-cut along the side of his neck, skipping sideways to keep from getting spattered.

  The boy he’d kicked was out cold. He chopped into the top of his head and left the axe sticking there.

  There was no shovel or pickaxe on the cart. There were iron hoops driven into the timbers of the bed, for stowing a shovel and a pickaxe in, but the tools themselves were long gone; the war, probably, like everything else. He briefly considered trying to hack a hole in the turf with the axe, or scooping one with a barrel-stave, but both the women were large, you’d have to dig a long way down, and the ground looked like a thin layer of peat over limestone; the hell with it. He scrambled back up on to the box, grabbed the old man by the scruff of the neck and pitched him on to the ground, then sat down. He was exhausted, and his rib hurt like hell, so he could barely breathe. He prodded it gently with his fingers and reckoned it was just bruised, not broken. Just as well he was wearing a heavy coat and that it had been a slingshot, not a bow. But bows cost money; a sling is just a bit of old cloth, you can make them out of scraps and leftovers.

  He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe, in spite of the discomfort. There was something in the liturgy about not killing— or was that just fellow craftsmen?—but he was pretty sure it was in the same section as not stealing, and he knew the Great Smith had made him to be thief, so maybe He needed killers, too. His father had killed all the time, and not just for the table; there was the time they dug a run-off from the stream to flood the rats’ nests under the barn, and Dad reckoned they’d probably drowned a thousand rats that day, and bloody good riddance. His foot hurt like hell where he’d kicked the boy. He wondered if he’d broken his toe.

  Look at it this way, he told himself. If He hadn’t wanted me to do it, He wouldn’t have rewarded me with a cart of my very own. And there was the pack to consider, of course. If he’d died and the boy had searched his pockets, the boy would’ve found the pack and sold it to some heathen, and He wouldn’t have countenanced that. He wouldn’t even let it go to save a whole city.

  It wasn’t a good place to be, Musen could see that, but finding the strength to get moving again was another matter entirely. Deserters, presumably; he’d heard they were calling up young boys for rear-echelon duties, or maybe they’d scavenged the uniforms. It was all as broad as it was long, as Axio would say.

  Sitting upright to drive was particularly painful, but he couldn’t help that. At least the horses were all right, though he fancied the right-side horse might have a shoe coming loose. He’d have to check that some time. Not now. He called to them softly to walk on.

  Malfet fair turned out to be smaller than he’d anticipated. There were maybe two dozen stalls, fitted comfortably into the market square, with possibly a couple of hundred people milling round them; clean, neatly dressed. He hadn’t seen anything like it since he left Mere Barton.

  He found a watering trough and a rail to tie up to, then gently lowered himself to the ground and put his weight on his bad foot. It held up better than he had any right to expect. All he could do was choose a stall at random.

  “I’ve got six big barrels of mead,” he explained, “ordered in from up-country. I don’t actually know who they’re for. I’m new with the firm; the women who fixed up the deal couldn’t make it.” The stallkeeper thought for a moment, then referred him down the line; inaccurately, as it turned out, but the woman there put him right and sent him across the square to a stall with a great rack of barrels on solid-looking trestles. “This is a bloody fine time to show up,” the stallholder said irritably. “We’d almost given up on you. What kept you?”

  Musen explained about the bridge being down, though he wasn’t sure the stallholder believed him. But what the hell, better late than never, and the stallholder’s sons would unload the barrels if he’d point out the cart. And presumably he wanted paying? Three angels.

  Musen walked away, turning the coins over in his hand. He stopped by a stall selling fancy metalwork, and pointed to a dear little three-legged stand for a teapot.

  “That’s nice,” he said to the woman.

  “Mezentine,” the woman replied. “If you turn it over, you can see the mark. Twenty stuivers.”

  Musen grinned. “I haven’t got a teapot. What about that?”

  “The knife?” The woman picked it up and put it in his hand. “That’s Blemyan work, very rare. Pre-war, that is. Fifty stuivers.”

  Musen gave her an angel. She raised both eyebrows, then scrabbled frantically for change. “Where’s Blemya?” he asked.

  “What? Oh, way down south somewhere, other side of the sea. Bloody hot, so they say, which wouldn’t suit me.” She gave him a full handful of coins, which he stuffed in his pocket without counting. The woman leaned forward a little. “They do say,” she said, “Blemya’s going to come in on our side in the war, any day now. It’s all settled, apparently. And then we’ll show that bastard Senza what he can do.”

  It was a very good knife, in fact, and he felt sure that if ever he got a chance to draw it he’d be able to put up quite a fight. But against the man who crept up on him and cut his throat in his sleep, he couldn’t see how it would be any use at all.

  For one angel eighty-five he bought eight big jars of flour, a side of bacon, six strings of smoked sausages, a sack of carrots, four sacks of oats, four jars of dried fruit, five honeycombs, four good coats, two hats, three pairs of boots, two linen shirts, four pairs of trousers, two iron pots, a ladle, two wooden bowls and four matching cups, a shovel, an axe, a pick, a sledgehammer, a carpenter’s cross-pein hammer, a frame saw, four chisels, a dozen five-foot oak floorboards, two blankets, a tinderbox, a coil of rope, three iron splitting wedges, a small oilskin tent and a pair of stockman’s gloves. He arranged them in the back of the cart so he’d be able to find what he was looking for, covered them over with the tent and took the right-side horse to the smith to have its shoe seen to. It was dark by then, and the usual crowd of old men, boys and hardened drinkers had wandered away. The smith was a young man, not much older than Musen; he worked quickly and well, but the effort he had to put into striking suggested that his hammers were too heavy for him.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” Musen hazarded.

  “Only been here six months,” the smith replied, working the bellows. “Got this.” He pointed to his foot; it looked perfectly normal to Musen. “Which got me my demob, praise be, and I got on my donkey and rode west till my money ran out, and here’s where I ended up. This place was all boarded up, so I had a word with the old smith’s widow and got the whole lot for fifty stuivers a month, tools and fixtures included.” He grinned, and splashed water all round the edges of the fire from a copper can on a long handle. “I lit the fire the first day and it hasn’t gone out since.”

  “You were a smith in the Service, then.”

  “Farrier.” He pulled the shoe out of the fire with the long tongs, inspected it, shoved it back under the coals, worked the bellows a few times. “But if you can make horseshoes you can make pretty much anything. Mostly round here it seems to be gate
fittings, nails, busted tires and general mending. You can’t get coal, but charcoal’s quite cheap.”

  “My uncle’s a smith,” Musen said.

  Out came the horseshoe, cherry-red and almost translucent. The smith draped it over the horn of the anvil and gave it a few smart taps. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. He lives in Mere Barton, in the second street. The fifth house, on the third floor. He keeps his hammers and his anvil at our house.”

  The smith held the horseshoe up to inspect it, turned it over, put it back in the fire. “If you’re looking for a discount, forget it,” he said. “Otherwise, I’m Glabria, pleased to meet you. Don’t get many craftsmen out here in the sticks.”

  “I’m Musen.”

  The smith looked at him for a moment. “You ought to be in the army,” he said.

  “I was, for a bit. Didn’t suit.”

  “Ah well. Nobody’s going to give you any trouble round here, and the draft doesn’t bother coming here any more. Cleaned this whole district out years ago. You could try walking with a limp, though. You don’t get asked questions if you limp.”

  “Actually, I don’t need to fake it. But thanks for the tip.”

  “Right.” Out the horseshoe came again; many light taps, until the iron turned grey. “Let’s have her foot up and we’ll see if it fits.”

  It fitted; Glabria tapped in the nails and cut off the ends, and Musen thanked him. “How much do I—?”

  Glabria grinned. “Get out with you, I was just kidding. Keep your money.” He tipped charcoal from the bucket on to the fire, heaped it up evenly with the rake, then doused all round with the copper can. “You in a tearing hurry, or have you got time for a drink?”

  The cabin next to the forge was what you’d expect of a hard-working man living alone. There was one chair and a stool, and the table was thick with black dust. Glabria lifted a stone bottle off the floor, pulled the stopper and sat on the stool. “So,” he said. “You stopping here or passing through?”

  Musen hesitated, then sat down. “Depends,” he said.

  “Really? What on?”

  He put his hand in his pocket. “Been a craftsman long?”

  “Born to it. We’re all Lodge in our family.”

  Musen took out the silver box and put it on the table. “Go on,” he said. “Take a look.”

  Glabria opened the box, took out the cards and laid them on the table one by one. “There’s a pretty thing,” he said. “What is it?”

  Musen felt a wave of disappointment. “Lodge property,” he said. “It’s very rare and worth a lot of money, and I need to keep it safe. There’s a man trying to steal it from me. He’ll kill me if he catches me. He’s very dangerous.”

  The look on Glabria’s face would have melted a heart of stone. “What do you expect me to do? I’m not anybody. I’m just a blacksmith.”

  “And I grew up on a farm, it doesn’t matter. This belongs to the Lodge, it’s really old and special. You’re a craftsman, you’ve got to help me, it’s what the Lodge is all about, helping each other.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Musen started putting the cards back in the box. “I can’t make up my mind. If I stay here, he’ll find me. If I go—”

  “If you wanted to keep from being noticed, you’ve gone the wrong way about it,” Glabria said. “You’ve been going round buying up enough stuff to found a colony. Even I heard about it, and I wasn’t interested. Your man’s only got to ask a few people: he’ll know you’ve been here and the direction you left in.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t smart.”

  “All right,” Musen said, “maybe it wasn’t. So what do I do now?”

  Glabria thought for a while. “You reckon this man of yours is a hard case. Just how bad is he?”

  “He’d kill either of us without a second thought, if he reckoned it’d help.”

  “That’s not encouraging,” Glabria said. “What I was going to suggest was, you find someone else to drive your cart full of stuff out of town. He follows the cart, by the time he figures out he’s been tricked, you’re miles away in the other direction. But who’d be prepared to do that for you if it meant getting his throat cut?”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Musen said quickly. “He’s not crazy or spiteful or anything. He’d kill you for a reason, but not just because you pissed him off.”

  Glabria looked doubtful. “I don’t think I want to take that chance,” he said. “Anyway, you’re a head taller than me, and everyone round here knows me, so I couldn’t do it.” He thought for a moment. “Of course, it’s the hiring fair. You hire a carter, big tall chap your size and build.” He grinned. “So maybe he decides to rip you off, take the cart and keep on going. Like you care. Yes, that’s what I’d do.”

  “Will you hire someone for me?” Musen asked eagerly. “Only, if he catches this carter and asks him, who hired you?”

  Glabria shrugged. “Sure, I can do that. Then, if your man comes looking for me, I can send him the wrong way, buy you a bit more time. You need to figure where you actually want to go, mind. Just wandering about aimlessly won’t do you any good.”

  “Blemya,” Musen said.

  “What? Where the hell’s that?”

  “South, across the sea. Oh, he’ll follow me there, if he knows that’s where I’ve gone. But maybe by then I’ll have thought of a way of making it safe, somewhere I can hide it away where he won’t find it. That’s all that matters, after all.”

  Glabria seemed bothered by something. “If it’s Lodge property,” he said, “why don’t you take it to the authorities? I bet you they can look after it far better than you can.”

  “I can’t do that,” Musen said quickly. “It’s complicated, I can’t tell you why, but I can’t. It’s up to me, and I’ve got to take care of it. You don’t think I want this, do you? I’ve lost everything because of this—” He stopped, as if a door had just closed. “We’ll do what you said. It sounds like a good idea.”

  Outside, someone was calling Glabria’s name. “Stay there,” he said. “I know who it is, just a customer. I won’t be long.”

  Shortly afterwards, Musen heard a hammer ringing on an anvil, and cheerful voices. He leaned back in the chair and suddenly realised how exhausted he was, and how many bits of him hurt, and how filthy his clothes were. He looked down at his hands and noticed grains of flaked dried blood lodged in the webs between his fingers, and had no idea if that blood was his own or somebody else’s.

  Glabria woke him with a slight nudge against his foot.

  “I took a look in your cart,” he said. “That’s a lot of stuff you’ve got in there. Worth quite a bit of money. Are you sure you—?”

  Musen shook his head. “I couldn’t give a damn. No good to me if he kills me.”

  “No, I suppose not. Look, while you’ve been asleep, I’ve been busy. I found you a carter.”

  “That’s marvellous. Thank you.”

  Glabria sat down on the stool and unstoppered the bottle. “I spun him this load of rubbish about supplies for a gang of men up on the moors mending a wall. I suppose he believed it, not that it matters; I don’t think for a moment he’s going to be heading the way I told him. My guess is, he’ll run up the north road and take the east fork, over to Sleucis or somewhere like that, sell the rig and the gear and move on quick. If he gets that far.” Glabria shrugged. “He’s not from around here, so he doesn’t know me, I told him a made-up name, and I washed my face and took the apron off, so he may not even have figured me for a smith. I don’t think he was listening too carefully. Anyway, I told him to come round first thing, at sunrise, so he should be here any minute.” Glabria paused. “You sure you want to go through with this?”

  “What? Yes, of course I do.”

  “Fine. Listen, I’ve put two loaves and a skin of water in a bag. I reckon, if you’re smart, you’ll hike down the south road till you come to the river, then look out for one of the big charcoal barges. They’ll give y
ou a lift as far as you like for twenty stuivers, and you don’t leave footprints floating down a river. If you’re serious about wanting to get to the coast, you ought to be able to find barges that’ll take you the whole way, and you won’t have to set foot on land once, just hop from one boat to another. If anything’ll make you hard to find, that will. Boats move on, see: by the time your man’s figured out you’re on such and such a boat, it’ll be twenty miles downstream; he’ll be chasing about all over the shop.” He frowned. “Look, I can’t give you any money. I haven’t got any to spare right now. If you hadn’t been quite so—”

  “That’s all right,” Musen said. “Money isn’t a problem.”

  Glabria sighed, and gazed at him. “Never thought I’d meet anybody who could say that with a straight face,” he said. “And when I do, he’s one step ahead of the Devil. Nothing’s ever perfect, is it?”

  Musen didn’t watch the cart leave, though he heard its wheels on the stones of the yard. He took a while rubbing sheep’s-wool grease into his boots; it was all he could do by way of preparing for the journey, so he did it as well as he possibly could. He had the Blemyan knife, the decent coat he’d bought at the fair, the cloth bag with the bread and water and a hundred and fifteen stuivers in small change. He felt like he was wearing armour, safe and strong.

  Glabria let him out of the side gate, with directions for finding the south road. “Good luck,” the blacksmith hissed, then shut the gate firmly behind him, and then bolts shot home, top and bottom; it was a pleasure meeting you, and please, please don’t come back. Well; he could see Glabria’s point. He hoped the smith had been human enough to steal something from the cart, to make it worth his while.

  It was a good time of day to be starting out. There were a few people about, but not too many. Musen guessed they’d finished their business early at the fair and were starting home. He walked for a while behind two men, close enough to eavesdrop on what they were saying—actually, it was one man talking and the other presumably listening; the duties of a newly hired brickmaker, followed by a long list of offences that would earn instant dismissal. Musen quickened up and overtook them as soon as he could. A bit further on, he came up behind an old man, an old woman and a girl: similar situation, except that the woman was telling the girl what she’d do to her if she caught her fooling around with the man, who didn’t utter a word all the time Musen was trailing them. It was just as well Musen had long legs and could outpace people without having to run.